


Fame's Dynamite, Fortune's a Chainsaw

by theZanyArthropleura



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Cruise Ship, Alternate Universe - No Omnic Crisis, Engineer Brigitte, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Magician Symmetra, More tags to be added, Safari Winston, Safari Winston is best tourist, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Socialite Ashe, Sprinter Tracer, Strangers to Friends to Lovers, Summer Vacation, brief danger involving drowning and open water, even more tags to be added after that, rescue romance, rich people with dangerous hobbies, tulum sombra
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-07-22 19:42:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19983844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theZanyArthropleura/pseuds/theZanyArthropleura
Summary: In the late 2040s, the decommissioned omniums, city-sized manufacturing facilities of the defunct Omnica Corporation, remained exactly as they were, and nothing of note happened.Basically it's an 'everyone is on a cruise ship' story, but with speculative alternate timeline progression thrown in, plus action, mystery, and an eventual plot.(Abandoned, awaiting potential rewrite)





	1. Boat's Haunted - Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is pretty much a self-imposed writing exercise, the basic rules being:
> 
> * The story takes places in the Overwatch present day of 2076/77, but in an AU where there was no Omnic Crisis, and thus no Overwatch or Talon
> * Here, after 30 years of alternate history, each playable character is a version of themselves represented by an in-game alternate skin
> * More than one skin may appear per character, as long as it makes enough sense that it could be an alternate outfit (sometimes it might just be a reference)
> 
> I will probably end up slightly adjusting some of these for certain cases, but basically this is an alternate-skin AU, but not specifically a summer skin AU, or a Halloween/fantasy AU, etc. but whatever I feel best fits both the premise _and_ the adjusted timeline. There are three main categories or story genres that the cast will be more-or-less sorted into (with some overlap), and not all of them will necessarily be apparent until much later.
> 
> I'm not planning a set schedule, this is just a side project that will be updated whenever I have a new chapter.

Cross-legged on the plain, large-tile floor, her back only a few inches from a wall of much the same composition, Sombra took a short, quiet moment just to feel the water against her skin. All around her was a cool, refreshing temperature and a noticeable pressure that made her very aware of herself, the feeling especially stimulating wherever her wetsuit and diving gear left her skin exposed. The sensation was calming, soothing, and reassuring in a way that brought about a comforting sense of peace.

…Okay, so it might not have been _that_ short a moment.

But she had time. Despite appearances, her tech could keep up a steady air supply for up to an hour of being fully submerged before consumption outpaced production. And she _was_ here to test her equipment, wasn’t she?

Granted, the public indoor pool might not have been the _best_ place to run through her checks, but it wasn’t as if she cared much what these people thought of her, anyway.

Or, at least, she should _hope_ she didn’t, because the looks she was already getting from the occasional goggle-wearing swimmer that strayed too deep were only going to get weirder.

Sombra twisted the ring of the diving watch on her left wrist, feeling the dial click into place. The neon-green lines along the fingers of her gloves briefly shone with a luminescent glow, and with a simple motion of her hand, a custom heads-up display appeared across the lenses of her goggles.

A smile played at the corner of Sombra’s lips as she flexed and maneuvered her fingers about in the water in front of her. She scrolled through digital screens visible only to her, diagnostics and reports running on her own equipment, the water conditions around her, and movement being detected in her proximity.

Typing out more commands on non-existent keypads, Sombra commanded her dual-purpose propulsion pack and survey drone to detach from its mounting point on her upper back, the view from its camera opening in an additional sub-window to the top left of her goggle-display. She directed the small, flattish, shuttle-like submersible to perform several laps around the floor of the pool before expertly returning it to its housing.

For a final test, Sombra held her right arm out in front of her goggles, bringing the set of jade and silver beads around her wrist close enough to observe the faint symbols carved into each of the larger stones. She watched, with pride and anticipation, as her most recently-completed piece of code placed a neon-green reticle over each ancient glyph and displayed the modern translation alongside it.

With her tests complete, Sombra clicked her watch back to its former position and pushed herself off the floor, getting a few good kicks in with her flippers as she propelled herself to the surface.

What had been a muted, blended ambience of noisy activity around her returned to full volume the instant her head was above the water. The Level 8 indoor pool occupied a large, vast room that stretched clear from the port side of the ship to starboard, rows of large, nearly continuous windows visible on two opposing walls. Despite being on one of the narrower, upper decks of the cruise liner, it was still an impressive sight to take in.

Foot traffic was the busiest at the stern-facing end of the room, the side that served as a large hub of activity and seamlessly flowed into the more marketplace-like remainder of the deck. The other three sides of the pool had large, spacious walkways, but little reason for anyone to actually be walking on them if they weren’t using the pool itself, or lounging in any of the dozens upon dozens of deck chairs set up all around it.

Sombra paddled over to one of the metal ladders spaced around the edges, indulging just slightly in the show of pulling herself up out of the water. She loosened her breathing apparatus to hang down around her neck almost immediately, but took a moment to slick back her bright purple, shoulder-length hair before setting her goggles high on her forehead.

Approaching her own reserved chair, Sombra disengaged the flipper attachments from her near-knee-high diving boots, briefly drying herself on her towel – her suit and gear would dry off pretty quickly on their own – before clipping the bright yellow fins back into storage on her waistband.

Most of the looks she tended to get were somewhere between attentive appreciation and _what the heck are you wearing_ , and Sombra was never sure which she liked better. Even on her previous stays, she’d almost never bothered to change out of the dull-purple-and-neon-green crop top and shorts of her wetsuit, no matter where she went on the ship. Still, it wasn’t like she had the _worst_ fashion sense on board, even now that she was keeping all of her additional gear on her person.

Well, _almost_ all of her gear.

Aside from a few of the maintenance levels below the main deck, Level 8 was one of the tallest single decks on the ship, and where Sombra stood was technically halfway up. Owing to the depth of the pool, the entire section around it was raised to the level of the windows, while the other three-fourths of the deck’s length were low enough that light from the windows shone downward onto the rooftops of various restaurants, bars, and gift shops.

Sombra had been navigating her way through the crowds and smaller kiosks, and had almost made it to the top of the wide stairwell that sloped down to that area, when a very close, soft-spoken but strangely booming voice caught her attention.

“Er, excuse me, miss…”

 _Very_ cautiously maneuvering through a stunned and quickly retreating, but thankfully not frightened crowd, was an actual, genuine _gorilla_ of gargantuan proportions.

A gorilla wearing an equally large, sky-blue, pinstripe dress shirt, overlaid with some sort of metal-and-leather-strap harness. The odd arrangement seemed an especially elaborate way to mount a large number of travel satchels on his person, along with one enormous, oddly-shaped suitcase that appeared to be held in place by a pair of metal rails supported precariously upon his back.

And if that dark blue, leather-bound explorer’s hat, those round-frame spectacles, and the large, silver pair of binoculars hanging around his neck didn’t just bring the whole thing together. It was the most hilariously tourist-y thing imaginable, and Sombra knew she was smiling wickedly, just managing to stop herself from bursting out in laughter at the odd display.

And of course, he wasn’t all that difficult to recognize.

  * _Winston_
  * _Genetically-engineered, super-intelligent gorilla_
  * _Raised on now-defunct Horizon Lunar Colony_
  * _Sole defector from ape uprising, only known Horizon inhabitant to have escaped to Earth_
  * _Accomplished inventor with more than six hundred patents to his name_
  * _(Probably paying for this trip out of royalties)_
  * _Widely sought-after consultant in nearly every major scientific field_
  * _Enjoys peanut butter, bananas maybe less so_



“Mm, if you wouldn’t mind…” Winston continued somewhat nervously as he knuckle-walked to a slow stop in front of the clearly attentive Sombra. “Could you… er…”

He was pointing – with a gigantic, leather-gloved hand, another part of the harness material strapped around his forearm – toward something directly behind Sombra, and a brief glance around revealed the wall of travel brochures that adorned the side of one of the nearby kiosks.

“Oh,” Sombra confirmed with a slight laugh, supposing it _would_ be pretty difficult – and probably amusing – for him to try and pick them out himself. “Sure thing,” she added as she stepped back and to the side, putting the brochures in arm’s reach while giving Winston a better view of the wall. “So, what are we thinking?”

“Hm…” Winston mumbled with a mix of surprise and excitement as he shuffled closer. He placed a contemplative finger to his chin, his shifting weight causing the suitcase assembly to shift only slightly more dangerously than it had been all along.

“How about… ‘Stern Observatory Whale Tours,’ ‘Seafloor Mapping Techniques,’ ‘Guided Underwater Diving Experience,’ and…” He paused a moment, seeming contemplative. “Maybe ‘Waterjet Rafting,’ ‘Guide to your On-board Culinary Adventure,’ ‘Exclusive Merchandise Directory,’ and… _Ooh!_ ‘Hydrofoil Maintenance’ and ‘Water Displacement Mechanics!’”

“Oh, is _that_ all?” Sombra muttered at least somewhat good-naturedly as she finished aggregating Winston’s selections. She held them out to him for a moment, but thought better of it and opted to stuff the folded papers into the leather pouch attached to his upper chest.

“Uh… thanks!” Winston offered awkwardly, a searching look flashing over his face. “I… don’t think I caught your name.”

“Oh, you can just call me _Sombra_ ,” Sombra offered with a smirk, correcting what had almost been an offered handshake into a casual, outward flick of her fingers.

Winston’s eyes widened. “You mean… _the_ Sombra? Billionaire software developer? _Here_?”

Sombra let out an amused chuckle, followed by an indifferent shrug. _Software developer_ was putting it… accurately, in a technical sense, and in a business sense, but also somewhat lightly… and, in some cases, a bit more _legitimately_. With a devious smile, she made a show of darting her eyes back and forth before leaning in with one hand held secretively to the side of her lips. “I mean, is it really that hard to believe, for _the_ Winston?”

Winston actually seemed sort of genuinely surprised and pleased at the recognition, his posture straightening to something brimming with modest pride. “Oh, well, I… do dabble a bit in your field myself. In fact, there _is_ a project I’ve been working on for some time, that I think…” He trailed off briefly, his eyes left wide and blinking for several moments.

“Oh, but I’m getting ahead of myself,” he corrected in what he probably thought was a casual attempt to backtrack. “Still, I do hope we can manage to run into each other again. I’m _positive_ we’d have quite a lot to talk about.” He offered a light, nervous smile.

“Oh, _por supuesto!_ Sure thing!” Sombra returned a more confident but genuine smile of her own. “And hey, if you ever want to come over to the private sector entirely, it’s a lot more lucrative than government work, if you know what I’m saying.”

“Tempting offer…” Winston made a show of consideration. “Ah, well, anyway, I should probably…” He looked about the room, confusion dawning on his face. “It appears I… seem to have been separated from my group…”

Sombra turned around for a more thorough search, quickly catching sight of two women excitedly waving and pointing in hers and Winston’s direction from over near another kiosk. The redhead was holding a large pair of sunglasses away from her face, an off-shoulder top hanging loosely over the quickly-waving arm she held high in the air. The short-haired brunette, clearly the more excitable of the two, had on some sort of teched-out orange track suit and looked as if she might be ready to dart across the crowded floor in a single bound.

“…That them?” Sombra asked flatly as she pointed a lazy finger in their direction.

Winston held a flat palm above his eyes in a searching gesture as he followed the indicated direction, his whole face then lighting up in relief. “Yes! Indeed, it is! Thank you, miss… Sombra!” He turned briefly back to face her. “So… should I plan on seeing you around?”

Sombra let the slightly pleading look linger in his eyes for just a moment before offering a light shrug. “Don’t see why not.”

“Splendid!” Winston smiled widely, offering a light but very noticeable wave as he made his way through the crowd and toward his apparent travel companions.

Sombra might have been a bit surprised that she’d just had a pleasant conversation with a gorilla, if she wasn’t so busy realizing she’d just talked to _Winston_. It wasn’t that she was star-struck, or anything of the sort.

It just… meant something, to put a personality to the reputation. Her supposed ‘peers’ among the wealthy and famous rarely kept her attention in anything of a positive sense, but occasionally, a more interesting story would catch her eye. Winston was one of the interesting ones, and not just for the obvious reasons.

After watching the large, somewhat bumbling scientist’s _adorably_ enthusiastic reunion with the two much smaller women, Sombra turned her attention back to the rack of brochures. While she’d been picking out some of Winston’s more obscure selections, she could have sworn she’d seen…

 _Sí_ , there it was!

Sombra cast a suspicious look at the ornate, gold lettering on a brochure stuck rather dejectedly near the bottom right corner of the rack.

_Magic Shows? Do people even still go to those?_

Finally, her curiosity got the better of her, and she leaned over to delicately slide one of the folded papers out of its holding. Her eyes widened at the tall, _stunning_ , statuesque woman staring confidently back at her from under a slightly-tipped top hat. Her sleek, tuxedo-like leotard perfectly accentuated her curves, and one of her arms seemed to be made almost entirely of a glowing, blue, sparkling light – at least, according to the image on the advertisement.

_Ohhhhhhh. I think I get it now._

  


* * *

  


Several hours later, Sombra sat in a medium-sized auditorium, dimly lit with a smooth, black stage bordered by fancy scarlet curtains. She was in about the middle seat of the third-to-last row of chairs on the right side of the center aisle, making herself at least somewhat scarce while still having a decent view of the stage.

Conveniently, there had been a show scheduled not too long before dinner, and Sombra had managed to work it into her admittedly sparse and possibly non-existent itinerary.

And no, it wasn’t _just_ because she felt like supplementing her hunger with a bit of thirst. Now that she’d thought about it, she’d never actually _been_ to a magic show before, and the concept seemed more of a challenge than anything. She was pretty sure no one actually believed real magic was involved, and that the appeal, for most people, was more-or-less the feeling of being left stumped by impressive skill in sleight-of-hand.

Okay, so that probably wasn’t how _they_ would phrase it, but Sombra knew better than most people, and was looking forward to the satisfaction of seeing right through every trick as it happened.

The dim lights were still on as the crowd filtered in, and the audience wasn’t nearly enough to fill the room, but it _was_ significantly bigger than Sombra had expected. In one of the front rows along the left side – and quite impossible to miss – was Winston, with the two women he’d been traveling with seated to either side. He had apparently either made another trip to the brochure stand or stopped at another one, judging by the sheer number of folded paper ads now sticking out of nearly every storage pouch on his person.

As the last stragglers took their seats, and the lights dimmed, it suddenly occurred as a bit odd that the curtains had been open the whole time, and that the stage was entirely empty. Usually, these things were supposed to have a bunch of props, weren’t they?

Low whispers persisted for several more moments, but after a time, silence fell completely.

Only then did a brightness settle over the center of the stage.

It was a glow of brilliant, aqua blue; a rectangular pixelation of particles swirling upward around a solidifying shape until the light dimmed again, something metallic grey and vaguely cylindrical spinning and lightly humming in its place. As its rotation slowed to a stop, the object folded apart into six panels, opening like a lotus until it rested flat against the stage. A bright, rotating, spade-shape of the same aqua light in the middle of the slightly raised center platform was accompanied by several outer lights of deeper blue around it, casting the immediate area in a dim, cool glow.

A moment later, more brilliance erupted in the form of several closely-nested ovals oriented vertically above the object, their outlines harsh in light blue and cutting sharply through the darkness. An ambient cackle of energy reverberated through the auditorium, and all eyes were on the moving, and slowly resolving shape forming within the innermost, rounded frame of light.

It was _her_ , Sombra realized, first from the glow of her arm, then from the shape of her silhouette, and finally as she gracefully and _powerfully_ stepped out through the rings of light, planting herself toward the edge of the stage amid roaring applause. She cut an imposing figure, clearly quite tall even before the height added by her hat and heels. More so, everything about her posture and expression radiated confidence, her face forming something that might have been a scowl if it wasn’t for the light smile at the corner of her lips.

The white panels at the fronts of her shoes – or the shoe portions of the mid-thigh-high boots that reached up past the white-accented trails of her uniform – were adorned with more symbols from a deck of cards – on the right, a heart, and on the left, a club. Those, and the complementary panels over her knees, were reflectively pearlescent and possibly metallic, and several similar accents in dull silver and gold acted to shape the dark fabric over her chest. The small, slightly raised collar of her white undershirt featured a neat, black bowtie and a cyan, diamond-shaped gem somewhat larger than the one affixed to her forehead. Her hat had perforated, metallic detail at its front, with sleek, white protrusions that loosely resembled rabbit-ears attached-through on either side in a way that complemented the design of a pair of strange devices mounted over her actual ears.

Sombra wasn’t sure her heart was supposed to be beating that quickly, but she clapped enthusiastically along with the other attendees until her hands approached numbness. The statuesque magician took three neat and elegant bows of acknowledgement – one directly forward, and two at slight angles to either side.

“Yes, very well…” the woman finally began as the applause died down. There was a certain amount of polite pleasantness to her voice that still did nothing to detract from the intense aura of mystery about her. She let her white-gloved right hand rest down at her side, but casually angled her glowing blue left arm to face a black-gloved palm upward, and each word that sprang from her lips was enunciated clearly and elegantly as she continued:

“Allow me to put your queries at ease. I am Symmetra, weaver of light and author of being. Many believe the world and its mysteries are unknowable, but _I_ am a seeker of truth.”

She held both hands in front of her – making it apparent that her left arm was not only glowing and sparkling like starlight, but also _translucent_ – and pinched her thumbs and forefingers together in close proximity before pulling the arrangements slowly apart. Blue energy formed a narrow tube in the growing gap, fading and solidifying into a simple, black wand with a section of white at its end.

“Call it what you will,” she began again, expertly twirling the wand between the fingers of her right hand, “there is an order to reality, one that may be bent to the will of those who are able to truly comprehend it. What I will demonstrate, here and now, is the power of knowledge…”

She twisted the wand again between both hands, its color fading to an outline of blue before flattening completely to a small rectangle. She held the result off to the side, between her thumb and forefinger, as it solidified into a single playing card.

“…of seeing the beauty, the harmony, that others cannot…”

She performed a sliding snap to de-align her two-digit grip, the single card flickering briefly to blue as it fanned out into a full hand.

“…a pattern, amid what is so often seen as chaos…”

She adjusted her grip to evenly stack the cards, then pulled suddenly at the air near the inner surface with the translucent fingers of her other hand. A rapidly-moving accordion of cards generated on a seeming loop between her now-widely outstretched arms, the loudly-fluttering procession feeding from one vertically-held palm into the other.

“…and the alignment, and realignment, of everything in its place.”

She harshly threw out her arms, a shimmering cloud of reflective playing cards scattering into the air and high above the audience. The crowd rumbled with applause, ‘ooh’s, ‘ahh’s, and surprised gasps, and Sombra was captivated by the scene above her as the cards slowly descended.

Their number seemed to dramatically decrease as the fluttering cards neared the ground, and there was only one remaining in Sombra’s vicinity by the time any would have been within her reach. She caught the card expertly between her fingers, and had just enough time to turn it over and confirm its identity as the queen of spades before it disintegrated into tiny motes of cyan light within her grasp.

So, maybe some of it _did_ look like magic, but the teched-out teleportation pad had kind of given it away. What Symmetra was using was definitely some sort of technology, and Sombra was familiar with quite a few types that could have potentially replicated several of the occurrences so far. She was _sure_ she remembered there being one that could have explained it all in one go, but right now, it was slipping her mind.

Misdirection was supposed to be a huge part of the illusion, and Sombra made a point to vary her attention as the show went on, but it was pretty clear almost every trick was ‘real’ in the context of whatever tech was being used to execute it. The most she could figure was that even though Symmetra kept generating wands, the energy was primarily channeled through the diamond-shaped opening in the palm of the black, fingerless glove over her left hand.

Sombra still ended up feeling like she was seeing things she wasn’t supposed to. Symmetra was good at keeping up appearances when she absolutely needed to, but in the moments when the audience was supposed to be wowed by something impressive, she let her expression falter just a bit. It wasn’t exactly a surprise – most of these types of performance gigs probably got old pretty quick, but it still stood in contrast to the sheer vigor of the woman’s opening speech.

It occurred to her that maybe Symmetra actually liked to _believe_ that stuff, about the universe and balance and shit. At the end of the day, though, dumb magic tricks were just dumb magic tricks, for an even dumber audience that probably hadn’t really listened to a word she’d said. Her discomfort grew more obvious, her posture even shaking just a bit, when she otherwise-elegantly requested a volunteer.

It was a standard-enough part of the show, and Sombra couldn’t completely deny that the appeal of possibly having the chance to be on stage with Symmetra hadn’t been lingering somewhere in the back of her mind. It was still honestly ridiculous that she’d ever make herself a part of something so… tacky-at-best, manipulative-at-worst. No way in hell was she really _that_ weak, _that_ desperate…

…and that was about as far as she’d thought the matter through before she realized that not only was her hand already raised, but Symmetra was, albeit reluctantly, pointing directly at her.

_Damn, chica. ARE you that desperate?_

Sombra didn’t even look around to find out how unappealing – if, at all, existing – the woman’s other options had been. It was quite possibly the most pointlessly idiotic thing she’d ever done, but she put on a confident, relaxed smile anyway and strolled down the aisle and up to the stage.

Up close, Symmetra was every bit as stunning, and every bit as intimidating. Even from the spot several meters away where she’d been directed to stand, Sombra felt her heart thumping like a jackhammer for probably quite a few reasons. Still, the distance the magician kept and the anticipatory wince that crossed her face did a lot to dull the moment. Clearly, she wasn’t expecting this to go well, or at least had some reservations about the segment’s inclusion as a whole.

“The laws of this universe, of what should and should not be, are ours to bend,” Symmetra began, her words bold but her confidence detectably faltering. “Chief among them: gravity. That which seeks to keep us rooted to the ground, ignorant of the true reality, and to the greatness that awaits.”

Another wand generated from light, and another flourish in the air to distract from the subtle gesturing of a translucent, ghostly hand.

Through the soles of her flexible, rubbery boots, Sombra felt the gradual, lifting intrusion of a thin layer of material forming between the floor and her feet. When complete, the shape was a meter-wide, circular panel of blue light, and it felt neither hot nor cold in comparison to the inert stage she had been standing on moments before.

With another upward flick, a cylindrical barrier extended up from the edges of the circle, containing Sombra in a translucent blue tube once the corresponding disc had enclosed over the top of the shape. A slight feeling of unease accompanied the imprisonment, but it was clearly a safety precaution more than anything. _All part of the show_ , as it were.

The single wand vanished, and instead, Symmetra pulled, seemingly from thin air, a large handheld device that resembled some sort of power tool equipped with three mechanical arms. It was dull, bluish grey in color with gold and white accents, and each of the three, evenly-spaced arms held a shorter version of the same type of magic wand the magician had used previously. The wands’ three white-and-grey-tipped points all faced inward, and as the section containing the arms began to spin like the head of a drill, energy built in the center of the formation.

That three-pronged shape seemed oddly familiar, and its image sparked something deep in Sombra’s memory, aligning with the teleportation pad, the manipulation of energy throughout the show, and the prison of solid light currently surrounding her.

  * _Hardlight_
  * _Architechs_
  * _Vishkar_



Sombra’s eyes widened, a completely new sense of fear washing over her.

No, no, it wasn’t that. If it was really a revenge play, they wouldn’t have done it like this. Too many variables. Way, _way_ too many variables.

That was what Sombra told herself, at least, as the device she knew very well was a _weapon_ was then aimed directly toward her.

The crowd gasped, and for a moment Sombra reeled in terror, before she finally registered the magician – the architech? – and the stage sinking below her. The angle of the – admittedly, heavily modified – photon projector followed Sombra even as everything but herself and the hardlight cylinder moved as one.

A levitation trick. 

Or… _actual_ levitation, facilitated by a direct line-of-sight and force application between the projector and a hardlight temporary structure.

Whatever horrified reaction had been all over Sombra’s face, Symmetra actually seemed somewhat pleased. After a moment, she lowered the cylinder to the ground, as slowly as she had raised it, and its occupant dropped half an inch to the stage when the entire container dissipated.

A still slightly stunned and disoriented Sombra stared confusedly at the magician for several seconds, deciding that there really wasn’t any underlying scheme going on here and that whatever was left of Vishkar still probably had no idea of her role in any of it. When Symmetra’s calm, polite expression started to show shades of an expectant glare, Sombra hastily took a grand, dramatic bow toward the audience and darted away back to her seat.

She was definitely never doing anything like _that_ again, no matter _how_ pretty the girl was.

The rest of the show was comparatively uneventful, and Symmetra ended the performance by setting her hat upside-down on a round, hardlight table in a mimicry of the classic rabbit-out-of-the-hat trick. She made a show of several unsuccessful and puzzling attempts to wave a wand over it or reach down into it, before the final flick ‘caused’ the hat itself to return to its temporary state and reform wholly into the shape of a translucent blue rabbit.

The admittedly-realistic projection held the same cloudy, star-speckled interior as the magician’s own left arm, and spurred wide applause – along with a very loud “Aww!” from at least one of Winston’s companions – as it animatedly pranced along the edge of the table. After a few laps around, it leapt to the floor and scampered away just in time for Symmetra to take her bow and disappear behind the closing curtains.

As she filtered out with the crowd, Sombra was left reeling, but mostly curious. Maybe Symmetra _wasn’t_ Vishkar, after all. She could have just ended up with their tech somehow, and not realized the full extent of its applications.

Because why the heck else would she be using Vishkar’s famed city-building, partially-weaponized technology for _magic shows?_

  


* * *

  


For such a big ship, there really wasn’t much outdoor deck space to walk around on. There were fourteen smaller patio areas accessible from Level 8, plus the semi-secretive ‘Level Seven-and-a-Half’ that was really just a partially-concealed deck space above the aft-most section of Level 7. The biggest areas were the stern and aft decks on the first level, and both of those were connected to narrow, outer walkways that would have gone all the way along the sides of the ship if they didn’t get tunneled-over by the parts of the first six levels that bulged out onto the hydrofoils.

So, when Sombra had the sudden urge to eat outside and watch the sunset, there really weren’t too many options. She could buy her way into the upper patios, no problem, but they would be way too crowded for the experience to be at all relaxing. Eventually she decided that watching the actual sun-setting part of the sunset wasn’t worth walking all the way to the back of the ship, and she settled for a couple quick concession snacks and a deck chair all to herself along the stern-starboard walkway section.

Foot traffic on the outside of the ship was pretty much limited to the odd sightseer, and the few people that had had the same idea were quite a ways off to Sombra’s left and right. It was calm, quiet, and peaceful, the sky now playing about in shades of red and orange while waves softly and rhythmically washed up against the hull of the ship about four or five stories down. There were a couple odd caws from seabirds, which seemed like it should be strange out in the middle of the Atlantic. Sombra wondered whether there was an island nearby, or if they’d just been nesting somewhere on the ship. That latter idea was at least sort of amusing, and Sombra smiled just a bit at the image of oblivious, bird-feeding tourists sustaining an entire population of hitchhiking seagulls.

Sombra was pulled from her thoughts by noise from above. Drifting voices and even the occasional shouting weren’t too uncommon on the ship, but even though she couldn’t make out anything that might have been said, something about _that_ noise in particular didn’t sit right with her. There were at least two voices, one rough and harsh and the other... soft, but also harsh.

The sound was coming from quite a few levels higher, but too far stern to be one of the upper patios, and that was strange, since all that was above the far-stern portion of Level 7 was a metalized roof that no one was supposed to be on.

From her angle below, the view was partially obstructed by one of the diagonal support struts that were occasionally plated over the outside of the above-deck levels, and even more obscured by the now rapidly-darkening sky. There _might_ have been rush of sudden movement, maybe a struggle, but it was impossible to tell what was happening until…

Sombra froze in place as the body dropped clear over the edge. With what little time she had to process the situation, part of her had to rely on the way the woman fell to decide whether she was alive or dead. It took a few moments to realize why that was so odd.

She wasn’t screaming.

Sombra had already leapt out of her chair by the time the woman hit the water below. Her dropped flippers hit the deck, her feet sliding inside soon after.

_Dammit, chica! What the hell are you doing?_

Her lips met her breathing apparatus, her goggles pulled down over her eyes.

_Wait… that arm, that glow… was that…_

Watch dial turned to activation.

_Hey, aren’t you supposed to not eat before…_

Sombra pushed off the edge of the hull and into freefall.

  


* * *

  


The moment Satya felt the sensation of being submerged, there was no panic, only a calm resignation. She wouldn’t fight it, no… she couldn’t even if she wanted to. Her strength had left her when she’d hit the surface, and her will… she supposed there was no point in clinging to false hope. Her air would soon run out, but even then, there would be no pain. That was what she’d heard, at least, and while she wasn’t sure she believed it… for now, it was quiet.

For now, considering the circumstances, it didn’t seem _so_ terrible a fate.

Then, there were arms around her. Another body against hers, fighting desperately to bring her to the surface.

Satya fought too, then.

Not to save herself, no… that would require something within her she could no longer grasp. But she would carry on so long as this other person, this rescuer, thought it worthwhile. If her rescuer fought, Satya would fight. If her rescuer gave in, so would Satya. She had never placed her fate, her life or her death, so fully in the hands of another, but it felt a fitting compromise.

Satya broke the surface quite a bit sooner than she had thought likely, given how deep she had let herself sink. She gasped for breath, the air salty but her lungs thanking her, regardless. The moment she opened her eyes, however, ominous terror of a different kind washed over her as the monolithic starboard hydrofoil filled her vision. Though she seemed to be moving significantly quickly in the opposite direction, the massive support structure was only seconds to impact.

Somehow, Satya was pulled to the right just in time, into the shadow of the ship’s overhang. An outstretched arm that wasn’t hers managed an impossible-looking, open-palmed grip against the sheer wall of the hydrofoil’s inner side, and while Satya was pulled roughly along with her rescuer and the rest of the ship, she swore some sort of luminescence had appeared in the lines of the other woman’s glove.

Because yes, Satya could now discern by the bright green and dull purple close in her vision that this was the same odd, scuba-gear-wearing woman from that night’s show. Her goggles and breathing apparatus were now properly over her face, which made it difficult, but not impossible to discern that she was attempting to yell something over the loud and overpowering rush of displaced water.

“Hold on… hold on to me!”

Against her better judgement, but with no remaining options aside from trust, Satya wrapped her arms tightly around the woman’s upper chest and midsection. She could vaguely register a loud, mechanical hum from somewhere off to her right, and turned to see a section of the hull at water level – further to the aft but still under the shadow of the hydrofoil – folding down to reveal an opening. Before she could question it, she felt the woman push roughly away from the wall and out into shadowed water.

The woman had placed herself below the surface, keeping Satya raised as far out of the water as possible. Satya’s right hand had settled over something like smooth, angular metal on the woman’s upper back, and whatever it was, she could detect a continuous vibration from somewhere within it. She let herself be taken by that sensation, focusing wholly on it as she was carried outward in what, due to the ship’s movement, was a diagonal path toward the recently-revealed gap in the hull.

Before long, Satya was somewhere with dim lights shining from above, the pool of water around her slowly settling as the large, mechanical door raised itself to cut the room off from the open sea. Satya let herself breathe, and calm, and cling tightly to the other woman as the noise from outside quieted and the water stilled.

“Th-thank you,” she managed weakly, and perhaps more desperately than she’d intended, her head tucked over the woman’s shoulder as the two of them treaded water in time with the other’s movements.

Eventually, the woman silently directed her to a ladder along the side of the rectangular pool, the platform around three of the sides being too high to simply climb onto. Satya finally let go, managing to slowly ascend the ladder on her own. She had decided to sit in a low kneel while she waited for her companion to join her, but her sore, aching limbs buckled, and she had taken to lying tiredly on the metal floor by the time the wetsuited woman appeared up over the edge and dropped lazily beside her.

The woman seemed to be in some amount of pain or discomfort, as well, but there was a pronounced brightness in her deep, indigo-blue eyes, and once she’d repositioned the components of her equipment that had covered her face, she offered Satya a warm, pleasant smile on soft, pastel-magenta lips.

The room was cold and damp, herself chilled from the water, but with each heavy breath and beat of her heart Satya felt a warmth inside her that threatened to overwhelm her then and there.

She was alive.

She was alive, back within the walls of the ship, with this woman smiling at her.


	2. Boat's Haunted - Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I forgot to specifically mention, but this is taking place on the cruise ship that can be seen from the Ilios map.

Okay, so the _transparent, glowing arm_ had already made it pretty obvious, but looking at her now, it was beyond clear that this was the same woman from the magic show. Here, though, Symmetra hadn’t been able to keep up any trace of her confidence or composure, and instead seemed… relaxed and attentive; awash with slowly tempering, but genuine, gratitude and relief.

And that, at least, was a relief to Sombra as well.

She lay there in silence, losing herself in the soft, yellow eyes that so gratefully stared back into hers. There really wasn’t that much time to wait around, but a few more seconds wouldn’t hurt.

“So, um… hey,” Sombra hesitantly broke the silence after several minutes, then took a long moment to lift herself to a kneel while her companion shakily did the same. Her own gear would take care of itself, but… well, actually looking at it up-close, most of the other woman’s outfit seemed more rubbery than fabric and would probably dry pretty quickly on its own. Still, soaked clothing wasn’t the only thing to be worried about with a fall from that height. “We should, uh… get you somewhere, right? The medical bay?”

With that, Symmetra seemed to pointedly withdraw, something fearful in her eyes that said all it needed to.

“Okay, guess not,” Sombra corrected quickly, making her best attempt to show that she considered the matter closed. She’d still have to make sure the woman wasn’t seriously injured, but ‘no hospitals’ wasn’t really that difficult a concept to understand. She instinctively checked to make sure the two small, cylindrical canisters were still affixed to her waistband, even though they would be of little use without actually knowing if anything was wrong in the first place.

Symmetra actually seemed surprised, but still a note skeptical, that she hadn’t been challenged.

“How about…” Sombra considered for another moment, a bit of rationalization slipping in as she delayed the inevitable. “Do you have a room?” Surely, it wouldn’t be _that_ complicated to get her somewhere more familiar, and then make another trip to—

“N-no,” the other woman replied at a low murmur, still seeming reluctant. “I mean… yes, I have a room, but… I do not think it would be wise… they…”

With _that_ , she pretty much shut down entirely, and Sombra realized she still had no idea what had even happened to her that had caused the fall. From the mood it had set her in, though, it might not be the best idea to put her though questioning, at least until they were both somewhere warm and comfortable.

And that, on its own, was proving pretty difficult.

She didn’t even want to do it – okay, maybe she _did_ want to, despite how much it would complicate things – but ultimately, time was a factor, and she wasn’t left with many options.

“Okay so…” Sombra began with a note of unease, “we need to get you _somewhere_ , and if it’s not going to be the med bay, and it’s not going to be your room…” She lightly sighed. “I’ve… got a room too, if you really can’t think of anywhere else.”

Symmetra perked up with a sudden, cautious hopefulness. “Would… would it be safe there?”

It was an effort to not let the alarm show on her face. “Y-yeah, probably the safest place on the ship, if I have anything to say about it.” _Which I do_.

Hope fell quickly to guilt. “I should not intrude…”

“Hey, _no_ ,” Sombra insisted, reaching out to lay a hand on the woman’s shoulder but hesitating when the way her body tensed didn’t exactly seem welcoming. “It’s not like that. Even if you hadn’t just fucking _fell ten stories into the ocean_ , I… to be honest, I really don’t mind the company.”

Okay, so maybe that was pretty embarrassing to say outright, but honestly… who the fuck worries about _intruding_ when they actually need real help? Sombra was already getting the sense that blunt honesty was going to be a significant factor here, and that scared her more than she cared to admit.

Symmetra stared at the partially-outstretched hand for a long moment, seeming strangely conflicted. Her gaze returned to meet Sombra’s, and after a bit of tense deliberation, she offered a reluctant but firm nod.

Sombra sighed in relief, slowly standing as the other woman attempted to do the same. She stumbled, but Sombra caught her with an arm around her shoulders – a gesture which earned a somewhat startled, partially hesitant reaction, but ultimately an easing of tense muscles and another slight nod.

“Does it feel like anything’s broken? Can you walk?” Sombra inquired, though even with the stumble, the fact she was able to stand at all was a good sign.

“N-no, and… yes, I think so.”

At the woman’s first step, however, only Sombra’s quick reaction kept both of them from being pulled to the ground. Sombra winced for only a moment before they both seemed to simultaneously realize that the fault had been not an injury, but the heel of Symmetra’s right boot that had at some point snapped off. That fact stuck out to Sombra as strange, given that the boots seemed especially sturdy and were likely reinforced with hardlight.

Together, and adjusting for the broken heel, the two of them took a few more slow, tentative steps that became a light shuffle, but they had barely made it out through the threshold of the room when heavy, distant footsteps were heard resounding along the metallic floors.

“Is someone down here?” called a high and soft voice from somewhere out of sight, likely beyond a bend of the hallway.

Symmetra looked suddenly alarmed, and Sombra was pretty sure stopping to explain _any_ of this wasn’t a very good idea, even discounting the more out-there theories that hadn’t yet fully materialized. She quickly huddled the two of them into a side offshoot where the dim row of lights along the ceiling would leave them hidden behind a cluster of pipes.

“Seriously? If this is another prank, it’s not funny… and if it’s _not_ a prank, you better watch out!”

The ship’s engineer was tall, fair-skinned, and wearing a set of bright, red-orange overalls, the right-side strap unattached and exposing just enough of her midsection to hint heavily at her well-built abs. She wore a similarly red-orange cap wrapped around with a pair of small, circular goggles, two long braids of her auburn hair swinging to-and-fro from in front of either ear. Her boots and gloves were heavy-duty leather, and her upper chest, calves, and left arm were adorned with plated armor panels in a metallic khaki or pale brown. She had some dark, maroon fabric that might have been a sweatshirt tied around her waist and draped over her right thigh, a small toolkit fitted over the left, and over her right shoulder, she heaved something that was most likely some sort of specialized wrench, but that looked heavy enough to properly bludgeon anyone who might cross her. She seemed more the innocent, idealistic type than anything, but it was still probably best to steer clear.

The moment the redheaded woman stepped into the ballast room they’d just left, Sombra and her companion made as much progress as they could down the hallway, ignoring the sudden exclamation of “I know you’re down here!” from the probably still-water drenched area they’d first clambered up to. They ducked around another bend and out of sight.

It wasn’t hard to navigate the ship’s inner workings. Sombra pulled down her goggles again and brought up a mini-map of that section of the maintenance level, tracking their progress through it in real-time. She planned out the best route to their destination, and adjusted on the fly to avoid any run-ins with the engineer.

It was ultimately more of a cat-and-mouse maze shuffle than any significant linear travel, but they made it without incident, Sombra hastily tapping at augmented-reality keyboards until a pair of flat, metal doors slid open.

“All the elevators go down to the lower decks, even if guests aren’t supposed to access them,” Sombra explained, beginning in a near-whisper as the two hurried inside. Sombra hacked the controls, quickly closing the doors and setting up a non-stop straight-shot up to Level 4, “This should be the one that lets off right next to where my room is.”

She’d planned that out on purpose, of course, but certainly hadn’t expected to be making use of that contingency so early in her trip.

The low hum of the moving elevator brought about a sense of calm, and after a while, Sombra noticed her companion taking a keen interest in the display screen that denoted each floor they passed in their relatively rapid ascent.

“The… other door. In the outer hull. That was… you, as well?”

Sombra was caught just slightly off-guard, but reminded herself that subtlety hadn’t exactly been a concern. “I figured yelling ‘ _open sesame_ ’ would have been in poor taste,” she chided with a shrug and a bright smile.

The other woman stared at her oddly for a moment, but eventually a slight widening of her eyes communicated that she’d figured out the joke. “…Oh,” she lightly exhaled, a small, but genuinely pleasant smile beginning at the corner of her lips.

“Sh-should be getting pretty close now.” Sombra turned to watch the display numbers for herself, in a most-likely-futile attempt to hide her reddening cheeks. _Damn, chica, keep yourself together!_

The doors opened, and Sombra hurried the two of them off to the left, and down a several-meter stretch of hallway to the door that was her own. She didn’t even need to swipe her key, tapping a few fingers through the air and taking on a tentative level of relief at hearing the click of the lock. With the actual opening, and finally closing of the door, she let out a long breath and took a moment to relax, pushing up her goggles again and leaning against the inside wall.

The main sitting room of Sombra’s suite had tan wallpaper with a green vine pattern, and was carpeted in a dark green-grey floral design. It was a fairly wide space, and the first several meters of the wall along the right side curved outward to accommodate a large-screen TV and entertainment center. The wall up against the hallway featured a small coat closet to the left, and to the right, a few plush, olive-green chairs and ring-shaped end tables whose centers were potted ferns. Another pair of chairs with a table between them cordoned off the back-right quadrant of the space, where a larger, round dining table and a few wooden chairs were set up not far from the door to the bedroom. The left side of the sitting area extended farther backward than the right, ending in an open doorway to the outer sunroom – which comprised the actual outside face of the ship, complete with gigantic window. There were four more doors spaced evenly along the left wall, alternating around a row of three medium-sized couches.

The two of them hobbled over toward the nearest end of the first couch until Sombra felt her companion pull away from her grip, avoiding the offered seat and instead lowering herself to a kneel in the space beside the fixture and laying her head against the armrest.

Sombra stared oddly for a moment, but decided not to question it. “…You good there for a bit? I’m gonna go… get some stuff. Just let me know if you need anything, okay?”

Symmetra stared oddly at her for a moment, apparently hesitating over something.

“Are you hurt, are you… what is it?” Sombra prodded.

Symmetra hung her head low, not meeting the other woman’s gaze. “Could you… turn down the lights. They are very bright.”

Sombra’s eyes widened just slightly. “Oh… okay, _lo entiendo_.” She hurried over to the light slider near the entrance, lowering the brightness of the room just a bit and turning back around. “This good? Or lower?”

Widened, clearly surprised eyes blinked once. “Yes, that is… quite alright.”

“Right, then. I’ll just be a minute,” Sombra said as she started back across the room and toward the extended left-side sitting space.

She paused in her progress just as she passed the end of the couch again, giving the woman another long, searching look.

“…What should I call you?”

The gaze that met hers was again hesitant.

“I mean, I can just stick with ‘Symmetra’ if you want, so…”

“…Satya,” the woman said, her voice low. “I am Satya.”

“Oh, well, nice to meet you, Satya. You can call me Sombra.”

Satya nodded once, not seeming to recognize the name. That wasn’t a slight Sombra tended to take personally – she wasn’t in this game for the less controllable types of influence, anyway.

So, that made…

  * _Satya_
  * _Cruise liner stage magician, goes by ‘Symmetra’_
  * _Uses Vishkar hardlight technology_
  * _Projected arm has something to do with controlling it_
  * _Maybe caught up in something pretty bad?_
  * _Possibly uncomfortable with touch in certain contexts_
  * _(Might just be a trust thing? Seems like more than that, though)_
  * _Shy and nervous, accommodating to maybe ridiculous extremes_
  * _(Dammit, who hurt her?)_
  * _Seems to have some pretty strange priorities overall_
  * _Sensitive to bright lights, maybe?_



It was all throwing Sombra off her game, just a bit. It was one thing to learn facts about someone, to identify likes and dislikes and familiar, easy-to-peg personality traits, but most of what she was learning about this woman seemed to obey different rules entirely. Sombra had the distinct sense that trying to understand any of it was going to be a challenge, maybe even like learning a new language. In the meantime, though, she might not have to _understand_ every little thing, as long as she paid close enough attention.

Earlier that day, Sombra had dropped off her luggage along the right-side wall, intending to sort and unpack it all… really, around the time it was _now_ , but other things clearly took precedence. After a brief search, she located a small, vaguely cubic cooler bag, unzipped it, and pulled out the boxy, lime-green metal case concealed within. Carrying it one-handed by its extendable handle, she turned about on her heels, and her gaze fell on a small shelving unit in the back-left corner, near the entrance to the sunroom. It was populated with several stacks of plush, white, neatly-folded towels, and Sombra took half a stack under her other arm as she plodded back toward the main space.

She set the towels at the other end of the couch, handing Satya one to dry herself off and laying the device on the floor in front of her.

The case unfolded into a small medical station, complete with more biotic canisters in a side storage space, a few primitive offerings like needle and thread, and a raised, central docking pad that housed the miniature version of a teardrop-shaped analyzer drone. Sombra pulled away the detachable viewscreen, and waited for Satya to finish with the towel before holding the rectangular monitor out to her.

“This is… it’s like a medical scanner,” Sombra began cautiously. “See if anything’s wrong. You can… watch it yourself, if you want. I don’t need to know.”

Satya returned a skeptical look, a raised eyebrow still hinting at some level of surprise, and hesitantly took the screen in her hands, watching it intently. She was favoring her left arm, Sombra noticed – and thinking about it, the hardlight limb probably wasn’t tired or sore like the rest of her.

After a moment, the drone powered up, its central eye blinking as it hovered in slow circles around Satya. Blue light fanned out from the emitters on its two, stubby arms as it scanned her over.

“It… does not look like I have sustained serious injury,” Satya reported, her voice even.

Sombra exhaled in relief, letting herself relax as Satya returned the viewscreen to its housing, the drone hovered back to its landing pad, and the case folded closed. “You might want to lie down,” she began softly, catching the other woman’s attention and gesturing to the couch. “Rest would probably still do you some good.”

Satya looked over the offered resting space, but still seemed hesitant.

“Don’t worry about the couch, _amiga_ ,” Sombra said with a light smile, trying out her best guess at an explanation. “We have spares.”

After another hesitant, but softer glance, Satya made to stand. Sombra stood, herself, pulling away the case and readying herself to offer support, but Satya managed the maneuver on her own, only pausing to look oddly at the stack of towels.

“This… is not all of them, is it?” She asked with some concern.

“The towels? Nah, there’s plenty.”

Slowly, but somewhat reassured, Satya wrapped two of the towels around herself as she lay down, and moved the remaining one that was still folded to act as a cushion between her head and the armrest. Even once she’d settled in, she remained visibly tense, her wide-open eyes meaning she still wasn’t letting Sombra out of her sight.

With everything seeming to reach a momentary calm, Sombra’s attention finally focused back on the soreness in her own limbs that was threatening to bring her to the floor right then and there. With her remaining strength, she stumbled across the room to the right and let herself drop near one of the centrally-located armchairs, stretching her legs out across the floor and leaning her head back into the armrest.

She was facing away from Satya and toward the entrance, far enough across the room to be in plain view of the couch. If the woman wanted to keep an eye on her, the least Sombra could do was make sure she wouldn’t end up straining her neck too much.

There were a lot of burning questions on Sombra’s mind, but the one that currently took precedence was whatever the fuck had actually happened before Satya’s fall. So far, she’d been able to glean that someone else was involved, and that it might be at least one reason behind Satya’s seeming paranoia.

She spent a while debating whether she should wait for Satya to be ready to talk about it, or try to figure it out on her own. From the given details, the issue seemed to be more of an external threat than anything especially personal, and as much as that served to put Sombra’s mind at ease, it only made finding some actual answers even more critical. Sombra pulled her goggles back over her eyes and started digging through the ship’s security feeds.

There weren’t any cameras directly overlooking the roof in question, which seemed a particularly egregious security flaw to Sombra but made some amount of sense, given that there weren’t even any designated walkways. How Satya and whoever else had even gotten up there in the first place was evidently just another part of the mystery.

The clearest view Sombra could find was an indirect angle out the side window of one of the decks in the higher section. There was barely anything visible in-frame, only a few shadows moving around on the very edge. Still, Sombra could infer the presence of at least four people, and the clearest silhouette seemed to include a longer, held object that _might_ have been a weapon.

In defeat, she pushed her goggles away and heaved a sigh. It wasn’t much to go on, but Sombra was still trying to work out whatever she could from it when shifting movement from across the room caught her attention.

Satya had sat up and was pushing the towels away, wincing and shuddering but pushing forward as she pointedly set her feet on the floor and managed a searching scowl in Sombra’s direction. There was reluctance, perhaps fear or even sadness showing on her face, but she was making a clear effort to stamp it out with resolute defiance.

“ _Why_ are you doing this?” she nearly hissed, her voice scathing but betraying subtle notes of hesitance.

A bewildered, wide-eyed Sombra blinked once. Just as striking as Satya’s sudden change in demeanor was the sudden confrontation with the question itself. “Uh… which part?”

Sombra’s startled reaction had at least seemed to soften Satya’s expression, her narrowed eyelids pulling back just slightly, though her words remained just as cutting. “All of it.”

“I guess it was…” Sombra stalled, knowing even she hadn’t fully thought her actions through. “Just… right place, right time, I guess?”

“And now?” Satya’s scowl redoubled, her body tensing as her eyes drifted around the room. “All of… all of _this?_ Tell me, what is it you want from me, who do you work for, and why have you done this?”

Sombra’s eyes widened even further in alarm. “ _Nothing_ , I’m not… I’m not _working_ for anybody, do you…” Her words grew softer, more cautious. “…do you think I had something to do with this?”

“It is all too convenient, don’t you think?” Satya posed evenly, though guilt was already showing on her face. “That you were there to find me, and bring me here. What other explanation is there?”

“ _Hey_ , you… I mean, it looks like all you need is some rest, so if you want to leave, want me to take you home, or pass you off onto someone else, just say the word.” Sombra wasn’t sure what answer she was hoping to hear, and that worried her.

Satya tensed, then momentarily retreated in seeming defeat, and that worried Sombra more.

“It’s just…” Sombra continued at the silence, her quiet voice a resigned and cautious sigh as she leaned back against her armrest, “every time you talk to me, it seems like you need somewhere to stay for a while. Like you want to lie low for a bit—"

She caught her own words, with a wince, even before Satya had had a chance to react.

“You don’t need to tell me why,” she added quickly, taking a short moment to breathe in the somewhat cleared air before a new uneasiness settled in. “I mean, I’m not going to tell you _my_ shit either way, so maybe it’s only fair. None of it has to matter, just…”

“You would… let me stay here?” Satya’s words had lost their edge, now softened with confusion.

“As long as you want to,” Sombra answered, her eyes remaining averted to conceal the twinge of sadness that passed through her thoughts at the words. “There’s only one bedroom, but it’s yours. I haven’t even moved in yet. Plenty of space around here, it’s really not a problem to—”

“Why?” Satya interjected, confusion still evident. “Please tell me why.”

Sombra snorted an almost laugh, shrugging her shoulders with a light smile. “I already told you, didn’t I? I’m lonely as shit, I’ll take anyone.”

At the silence, her face fell again.

“Truth is… _No lo sé_.” Sombra admitted, with another, more genuine shrug. “I _don’t know_. I’ve never done stuff like this. I mean, maybe I think I can help, but…”

“I don’t think you can,” Satya mused darkly, her words almost a whisper.

“Pretty sure I _could_ , actually,” Sombra challenged, smirking to herself as the smile returned to her voice. “Whatever shit you think you’re dragging me into, I’m probably the exact right person to get dragged into it.”

“I… suppose that is… not so difficult to believe,” Satya conceded with a strange air of contemplation.

The more Sombra thought about it… well, her specialized equipment didn’t exactly scream ‘random bystander,’ and that left few reasonably likely alternatives. She couldn’t exactly _blame_ Satya for her suspicion. “Sooo… we good?” she asked somewhat awkwardly as she turned to face Satya directly. Secretly, she hoped the woman would still give her the opportunity to move on from that subject like she had in the past.

Satya took a long moment, apparently to think it over. “Yes, I… suppose we are,” she mused, her uncertain face briefly showing just a hint of especially poignant relief. “There will be… things I need to consider, if I am to stay here.”

“Yeah?” Sombra asked with a sudden eagerness she tried her best to hide.

“I have several performances tomorrow afternoon, and…” Satya grew briefly tense. “I would like to… retrieve some things from my room, if that would be viable.”

“Not that I need the details, but… that a ‘you need someone watching your back’ thing or an ‘I should bring a gun’ thing?” Sombra chided with a confident smirk.

Satya puzzled over that for a while, probably trying to decide whether the latter offer was even a real suggestion, but showed no visible surprise or disbelief. “I… do not… think such measures would be necessary,” she finally decided, still not seeming completely sure of herself.

“Right,” Sombra nodded ambiguously, “anything else?”

Satya seemed hesitant again for a few long moments. “I would… need to know where your shower is, and… without access to my own effects…”

“Laundry, bathroom, shower, spa,” Sombra indicated as she rose to a low kneel, gesturing to the four doors along the left wall in order from nearest to furthest outward. “and don’t worry, I’ll find you something,” she assured with an absent wave of her hand as she sat back against the chair.

“…Thank you,” Satya offered in reply, seeming confused but at least somewhat reassured. She laid back down on the couch, finally letting herself relax into the arranged comfort as she pulled the towels back around her. “I think I will get some rest, now.”

Sombra settled back in as well, the promise of calm relaxation now even more appealing than it had been before.

It really wasn’t that long before Satya apparently had _enough_ rest and steadily made her way to the shower. Either she was feeling better, or she was just that determined, and Sombra wasn’t sure she could actually rule out the latter.

Still, she reluctantly pulled herself out of her own rest and searched through her travel bags, finally deciding on a set of lilac-colored, long-sleeve pajamas. She left them folded by the door on top of another two towels, then searched around the supply closets in the bedroom for a spare pillow. She set it up on the left wall’s middle couch along with a lavender blanket from her own bags, but let the arrangement rest idle, supposing that her dip in the ocean meant she should probably wait to take her own shower before turning in for the night. For the time being, she decided to give her guest as much privacy as she could, and wandered out into the sunroom.

The sight of the moonlit ocean was almost calming, though Sombra couldn’t help but wonder what dangers might be prowling about in the night, out there or on the ship itself. The window was one-way, of course, so no one could have actually looked in on her, but even the illusion of a vast opening to the outside remained unsettling.

Taking in her more immediate surroundings, Sombra at least managed a brief, genuine chuckle behind a smug smile. There was a certain level of extravagance that was beyond ridiculous, and Sombra secretly hoped she would be around to witness Satya’s reaction to that room in particular.

It would probably be more enjoyable in daylight, though.

Showing Satya around the bedroom was mostly self-explanatory, and after a few minutes and what seemed like a few dozen ‘thank you’s, the hardlight magician was already settling in. Through the thinner pajama fabric, it was apparent that the blue glow from Satya’s left arm persisted all the way up to her shoulder, but Sombra stopped looking after that, getting the distinct sense that noticing was probably still a little invasive no matter how obvious it was.

“So, uh… I’m gonna rinse off first, but then I’ll be right out there if you need me,” Sombra stuttered somewhat awkwardly, making her best attempt at gesturing her arm to point out the door and around the corner. She cast a brief glance at a twinkling blue crystal orb suspended above three curved hardlight panels, an arrangement Satya had set up on top of one of the higher dressers to the right of the entrance, and stepped out to close the door behind her. “Well… goodnight, I guess?” she offered with a nervous but amiable smile.

Satya seemed confused for a moment, her face twitching into something that looked slightly skeptical, but finally returned a wordless, somewhat absent nod.

Not entirely able to decide on what she was feeling, or even if it was positive or negative, Sombra quickly took her shower, cleaning her suit and equipment in the process. Once she’d prepped it all for tomorrow, turned the lights fully off, and was settled into the couch, in her lavender tee and purple night-shorts, she’d figured out that it was some sort of happy, warm feeling, but also sad somehow.

She’d only been laying down for about five minutes when she heard the bedroom door creak open.

Opening already lazy eyes, Sombra stared across the dimly-lit quarter of the room toward her bags piled against the opposite wall, until Satya slowly and carefully entered her vision from the right.

“You need something?”

Satya remained silent for what was _actually_ at least two minutes, occasionally looking as if she were about to speak but ultimately faltering.

“I… can’t really answer a question you haven’t asked,” Sombra prompted, and though she’d tried to put more concern into it than condescension, the brief hurt that passed over Satya’s moonlit face still felt like a punch to the gut.

“S-sorry, I…” she tried again, leaning up on her elbow to more directly meet Satya’s gaze. “I just… I don’t know what you want… but, y’know, whenever. I’ll wait.” She readjusted to a more comfortable position, but kept herself visibly attentive.

Satya took a relaxed breath, and made a renewed effort to collect herself. “Could… could you…”

Sombra’s brain was already completing those words with several things that definitely _weren’t_ the actual request…

“I think I would… I would like it if… if you… instead of being out here…”

…or, so she’d thought.

 _¿Espera,_ QUÉ _?_

“You mean…” Sombra began, trying to keep her voice even and hoping, at least, that her eyes weren’t animatedly wide and sparkling at the suggestion. “I mean… _yeah_ , I guess. Sure, that’s—”

Sombra’s eyes definitely did widen when Satya produced a spinning photon projector in less than a second and pointed it right at her.

The next thing Sombra felt was the couch shifting under her, and she instinctively leaned further away from the edge as the entire piece of furniture was lifted off the ground.

Seeming wholly focused on her task, and oblivious to Sombra’s shock, Satya casually directed the hovering couch across the space, around the corner, carefully through the bedroom door, and finally to the opposite side of the centrally-placed bed against the wall shared with the sunroom. With a flourish of her fingers, Satya dissipated both her projector and the hardlight panel she had generated under the couch in order to lift it.

Though left shaking, and adjusting to tempered expectations, Sombra still couldn’t find it in herself to complain. She couldn’t be sure if this was an ‘I don’t want to be alone’ thing or an ‘I still need to keep an eye on you’ thing, but she offered Satya a nervous smile, one that became more genuine as she pulled the blanket closer around herself and got comfortable again. “Huh, guess you really are magic,” she murmured contentedly with a light smirk.

Satya winced slightly as she slid back into bed. “It is…”

“Hardlight, I know,” Sombra mused absently, but tensed as she noted the way Satya stilled with a shudder.

“You…”

“It was pretty big for a while,” Sombra deflected nervously, “in the industry. I’m into tech.” She forced a light shrug.

“I… suppose you are,” Satya agreed, her alarm seeming to abate a lot faster than Sombra had expected. She relaxed fully into her pillow and adjusted the covers, but still seemed uneasy as she cast her gaze toward the ceiling.

Sombra let a moment pass, but her anxious curiosity got the better of her. “How’d you end up with it, anyway? Seemed like the kind of thing they kept locked-up tight.”

Satya was quiet for another, longer moment.

“Vishkar gave it to me,” she finally answered, with the distinct, hesitant air of an admission as she sharply winced. “I was… I was one of them.”

So, she _was_ Vishkar. That was concerning, but ‘concerning’ in a way Sombra would file away for later and try to avoid thinking about for as long as possible. There were always too many of _those_ to bother dwelling on, anyway.

But the _way_ Satya had said it… that was at least promising, but nonetheless struck Sombra with a general unease. It was only when the silence stretched on for several more moments that the _present_ context of the information occurred to her.

“ _Oh_ , no, I don’t… it’s not a problem,” Sombra assured with a still-ringing pang of guilt. “I know all that stuff they did, that’s… yeah, no, don’t worry about that.”

Satya seemed like she still wasn’t sure what to do with the scattered response, but eventually exhaled, the tension in her shoulders visibly relaxing away. “…Thank you,” she quietly murmured, the words barely distinct from her breathing.

“There’s getting to know someone, and there’s learning things about them,” Sombra said with a shrug as she turned over on her back, as well. “For as long as this lasts, I… I guess I hope it can be more about the first one.” She fell silent as contemplation struck her. “Maybe they’re the same, I don’t know, but… people can be complicated. I get that, and I’m not going to act like I’ve heard enough at the first thing. I’d hope you won’t either, but… that’s a lot to ask, so I’m not going to. Point is, like I said before: if you’ve got secrets, keep ‘em. I don’t need to know.”

Silence stretched again for a time, before Satya spoke again, evenness having returned to her piercing voice.

“For saying you do not want the answers, you are asking a lot of questions.”

Sombra could just picture the woman’s arched eyebrow, and felt herself weaken. “Yeah, I… sorry,” She confessed. “I’ll… I’ll try not to do that so much. I’m just not really used to this.”

“…Used to what?”

Sombra considered for a long moment, the cool glow from Satya’s light across the ceiling and the steady approach of sleep wearing away at her hesitation.

“Trying,” she finally decided. “To make something work. To be nice. To not push someone away… I feel like I gave up a long time ago.”

Satya let out a long sigh, but paused a moment before speaking, her voice dark and solemn.

“…I had given up, as well.”

“Well, I want to,” Sombra affirmed with another shrug. “To get to know you, if you’ll let me.”

“… _Thank you_ ,” Satya said again, but from the welling of emotion that slipped into it, it seemed to have been building for a bit longer than the present pause.

“Well, anyway,” Sombra pushed forward, “I guess it’s only fair _you_ get a question.” She smirked fondly to herself, covering just a slight amount of unease. “Not saying I’ll _answer_ it, but you _get_ one.”

Satya hummed lightly as she seemed to consider the offer. “All of this…” she began, her words soft and hesitant. “The room, this equipment… you must be someone very wealthy.”

“Ha!” Sombra laughed, her smirk only growing wider. “Everyone seems to think so, don’t they? I just fit right in. Got them all fooled and they don’t even know it!”

When Satya didn’t seem to share her sense of humor, Sombra lightly sighed, her voice faltering to something more tiredly genuine.

“Probably most people on board have my OS on their phones,” she continued. “Heck, it’s what’s running the ship itself. And the money I rake in… it’s _fucked up_. If I kept it all, I could buy my _own_ cruise ship… or twenty.”

The continued lack of a response bothered Sombra more than she’d hoped. It was easy to see how this could all look like _legitimate_ bragging, and despite whatever reservations she still had…

“It’s the story everyone wants to believe.” Sombra began again. “Started with nothing, but I was _clever_ , got in at the right place, right time, maybe cheated a bit… money’s just the way the world works.” Silently, the smirk crossed her face once more. “Or, at least, it’s how it works _for now_. Got to learn the language if you want to rewrite the code. I’m playing their game, but don’t think for a _second_ I’m one of them. At the end of all this, _I’ll_ be the one pulling the strings, and… things are going to be different.”

“…I suppose it is not a bad thing to have dreams,” Satya mused uncertainly after a short moment.

“Always seems like most people stop dreaming by the time they can make it happen,” Sombra returned with a shrug.

“Or the dream was always a lie to begin with,” Satya provided cryptically.

Sombra let out a sigh that became a tired yawn, her gaze drawn to where the room’s blue glow reflected off the string of beads still around her wrist.

“Something tells me it’s going to work out this time.”


	3. Boat's Haunted - Part 3

Sombra awoke to a darkened room with light shining in through a partially-opened door, the air punctuated by the low hum of what must have been some part of the ship’s machinery.

The bed was perfectly put together, as if it had never been used at all. In fact, the only evidence that the previous night had even _happened_ was that Sombra was _not_ in the bed, but on a couch wedged tightly between two corner dressers. A couch that was definitely not supposed to be in this room, but somehow was.

 _What the heck even happened last night?_ Sombra thought to herself, despite possessing perfectly clear memories of the events. Groggily, she slid to her feet, lightly stretching as she stood.

_First day here, and I already got the hottest girl on the ship in my bed, but I’m pretty sure that’s supposed to happen differently._

Sombra smirked lightly at the thought, but winced as it turned sour. Somehow, the sentiment didn’t feel right, but she shook it off and let the moment pass.

Slowly, she made her way around the bed and toward the door, the light, mechanical hum getting louder until it became apparent that it wasn’t part of the ship at all, but the sound of running machines in the laundry room.

Satya was standing just outside the laundry room door, and it was only after Sombra had lingered along the partition of the bedroom for a few moments that her presence was noticed. Satya turned suddenly around, seeming startled for a moment, then sharply winced.

“I… did I wake you?”

It took Sombra few seconds to adjust to the sheer _urgency_ of the question. She tried thinking back to several minutes ago, but only ended up scratching her head in defeat. “Uh… I dunno? Maybe?”

Satya’s face fell, her posture slackening. “I didn’t know how long you planned to sleep. I thought that… if you could be placed a sufficient distance from the source of the noise…”

Sombra’s eyes narrowed in confusion as she attempted to process the statement. They shot open, left stunned and blinking, as the pieces fell into place.

“Th-THAT’S why?” Sombra gasped, her jaw on the edge of dropping. Her body shifted in stuttered motions to point both her index fingers first toward the bedroom, then toward the laundry room, then back again. “You’re… you’re saying that…”

“I thought it would work,” Satya supplied again, still with the air of a confession. “I needed… to prepare my uniform for the performances today, and…”

“No, no, it’s not… you didn’t…” Sombra quickly insisted, holding her hands up in apology. “I’ve got no clue what time it is, but as long as you’re keeping track, I don’t really care.”

Satya was still a touch skeptical, but seemed to relax somewhat. “Are you… sufficiently well-rested?” she asked with a lingering note of concern.

“Uh… _yeah_ , actually,” Sombra realized aloud, surprising even herself. Now that she thought about it, even though she’d spent the night on a couch with a single blanket, she was pretty sure she hadn’t had a night’s sleep that good in ages.

Satya’s expression pondered oddly for another moment, but tentatively settled. “There will still be plenty of time to make the trip to my room, and then I will attend my performances.”

Sombra considered that. “Do you… want me to be there? At your shows? Just in case?”

Satya tensed in uncertainty, taking a longer moment to think it over. “It will not be necessary,” she decided with at least some degree of certainty, “but… I would like you to meet me afterwards, if that could be arranged?”

“Yeah, anything,” Sombra agreed with a light nod. She wasn’t sure how she felt about leaving Satya alone for that long, but it wasn’t her decision to make.

Besides, having some time to herself might be a good thing. There were some _things_ she needed to do today, after all.

“…Anyway,” Sombra began again, after the pause in conversation had gone on for way too long without either of them moving. “I’m gonna… go order breakfast. Let me know if you want anything in particular.”

  


* * *

  


Breakfast – or brunch, rather, given the size of the meal and the lack of any lunch plans – was relatively quick and suitably awkward.

Sombra was honestly just winging it at this point, not entirely sure how to be a good host to a guest in her room in a context that _wasn’t_ an indulgent pretense. Flaunting her wealth and generosity for Satya’s benefit seemed to always have the opposite effect it should have – it wasn’t that Sombra _wanted_ to show off, but a little excessive spending here and there just _genuinely_ didn’t matter to her either way, and that idea seemed entirely impossible to communicate to someone who seemed so used to everything in life coming with strings attached.

Before leaving, Sombra managed a moment alone to dig quietly through her suitcase and into the hidden compartment where she stored her machine pistol. Clipping the weapon to her waistline, she activated the photomanipulative properties of the translucent partial skirt that flared out over the pants of her diving suit. The weapon would become completely invisible to anyone observing its position through the material, and any brief glances would still be thrown off by the primarily lime green color scheme that matched the rest of her equipment.

The journey to Satya’s room was uneventful, but Sombra made use of the thermal vision in her goggles just to be sure. Even after a supposed two years of inhabitance, the room itself looked entirely un-lived in, which was only slightly less of a shock than it would have been the day before. Satya quickly generated a suitcase out of light and packed away a surprisingly small number of belongings, and seemed intent on leaving as soon as possible as the two returned to drop off the items in Sombra’s suite.

Sombra still walked Satya to the theater, showing her off to the stage and slipping back out into the crowd with a set time for pickup in exactly two hours and fifteen minutes.

  


* * *

  


The moment they’d departed, Sombra set a timer for one hour and forty-five minutes on her wristwatch. With how large and occasionally difficult to navigate the ship could be, she figured she should probably give herself the full half-hour to ensure she could return in time from wherever her afternoon was going to take her.

She’d only expended six minutes by the time she made it to the forwardmost starboard patio area of Level 8. With the busiest lunch hours over, the bracket-shaped outdoor dining platform was now only sparsely populated, but it was still enough of an audience that Sombra had to make a specific effort to avoid direct lines of sight as she ducked and crept around unused serving carts and what seemed to be a perpetually-neglected salad bar.

When the coast was finally clear at the stern-facing end of the area, Sombra activated the adhesion system in her gloves and boots, the lines along her fingers flashing green as she quickly and silently scrambled up the smooth back wall and rolled over onto a flat, metalized roof section above.

Staying low to the ground, she hand-walked backward into about a dozen-meter wide, shadowed alcove against a sheer metal wall behind her. To her right, and toward the aft of the ship, was an upward-sloping ramp, one that led all the way up along the edge of the opaque metal panel that formed the angled front face of the entire upper passenger section. To her left, and toward stern, was another several-meter-high wall, and she climbed that next.

As she threw herself over the corner, Sombra drew her machine-pistol from her hip and held it aloft in a low crouch as she scanned the area. This rectangular platform was the over-the-roof extension of the forwardmost angled support strut plated over the lower stern passenger section, and was _also_ , from memory, what Sombra had determined was the most likely place from which Satya could have fallen. Looking over the edge now, an uneasy feeling settling in her gut, Sombra was sure any kind of sufficient slip or shove could have – thankfully – sent someone far enough out to miss the small lip of the main deck and hit the water directly.

At first glance, the platform itself looked remarkably empty, and at a loss, Sombra briefly pulled down her goggles to scan for movement or heat signatures, only to abandon the effort when none of either could be found in the vicinity. The search was just starting to seem entirely for naught, when Sombra’s eye caught something out of place in the shadow of the higher wall to the left.

Almost invisible from its small size and its coloration in the darkened corner, was a small, black, nearly rectangular shape small enough to fit in Sombra’s palm. It was smooth on all sides except for one that was especially rough, and Sombra had definitely spent enough time looking at Satya’s now-repaired boots to recognize it almost immediately as the missing heel.

Sombra looked up and winced at the sheer wall just behind the found object, still extending about one-and-a-half deck levels skyward.

_Damn, chica._

That section Satya had apparently leapt from – _before_ her final fall – was a massive, elongated block running down the center of the roof, its width just short of equaling the average width of a level in the upper passenger section. The wall itself was the most direct route to its upper surface, but due to its height, attempting to scale it could put Sombra in a reasonable line of sight with the first two patio areas at the very least.

Instead, she proceeded forward, dropping down the other side of the support clamp and hugging the wall all the way to the vaguely horseshoe-shaped stern observatory.

The observatory jutted out as a forward extension of the same slightly-pointed curve shape echoed by the sloping front of the collective passenger decks below it. Its flat roof was at the same level as the surface on which Sombra currently stood, and served as a loop around to the equivalent section running along the port side. The interior of the horseshoe shape was partially hollow, and created a slight void that the sloped front end of the central block dropped down into.

The slope was the same steepness as the other slopes most prominent in the ship’s construction, meaning it was just shallow enough that it might have been walkable without assistance if it weren’t for the smoothness of the surface. Either way, it was no problem for Sombra’s adhesive gloves and boots, and she made it to the top without much effort.

Drawing her weapon once again, and setting her goggles to thermal, Sombra slowly prowled around the two dorsal-fin-like, raised trapezoidal sections placed at the front and back of the platform. Either one could have provided cover for hidden enemies, and it was already becoming pretty clear why Satya might have wanted to get off this part of the roof as soon as possible.

The next step back in the sequence was however Satya, presumably _without_ high-tech cave-climbing gear, had managed to get herself up here in the first place.

Then again, Sombra wasn’t thinking with teleporters.

And there it was, only visible once Sombra had flattened herself along the narrower edge of the port-side sloped metal framing and leaned precariously around the side.

One of the windows on Level 9 had been strangely bubbled out in a wide, circular section, the resulting shape resembling a volcano turned on its side, with the lower edge of the crater stretching out slightly further into a horizontal platform. All the windows on the ship were hardened against any reasonable kind of impact breakage, but apparently no one had thought about someone using directed photonic energy to _melt_ the glass itself.

Of all the things Sombra had started to feel weird about either secretly or openly holding over her guest, carrying around a machinegun was suddenly seeming like a lot less of an issue.

Reaching out through her link with the ship’s systems, Sombra attempted to temporarily disable the cameras in the relevant section, only to find them unavailable. It wasn’t that they had already been turned off, the system simply couldn’t find or connect to them _at all_.

That was disconcerting.

Slowly maneuvering her way around and up the larger, diagonal framing, then across the narrow, horizontal strip of solid outer wall between the windows of levels 9 and 10, Sombra finally tested the strength of the re-shaped glass with her feet before dropping down onto the lower, extended platform. It was a clear view to just the outer edge of the flatter front section, but that still left the question of how Satya’s pursuers had followed her, assuming it wasn’t through the same teleporter.

Light reflected oddly through the wavy inner surface of the strange funnel shape, sparkling all around as Sombra slowly advanced inward. Even back at the edge where the window had been, there was still a leap of around half a meter to a railed walkway inside. The room was tall but with a relatively small depth inward, divided in half by said elevated walkway while the window itself remained an uninterrupted outer border of both levels.

Walking along toward port, the upper level of the room ended in a small doorway that led out into a narrow hallway, smaller and more plain than the kind meant for guests. There _was_ , in fact, a security camera mounted near the ceiling on Sombra’s left, but stepping past it and looking back revealed a deep gash sliced into the metal on the far side.

_Someone’s going around stabbing cameras?_

Bullet holes, she’d seen once or twice, but this was something entirely baffling. Even if someone had avoided their movement cycles, there were much easier ways to disable a camera up close without forcing a blade into solid metal. Whoever had done _this_ hadn’t even tried cutting the wires first.

Voices echoing down the hall pulled Sombra from her thoughts, and she quickly ducked past the threshold of another hallway breaking off to the left. An unused service cart rested against the wall and just past the edge on the far side, and Sombra crouched silently behind it.

“I’m _telling_ you, there was someone _down_ there!” the first voice pleaded, and Sombra instantly recognized the ship’s engineer. A quick digital search confirmed her as Brigitte Lindholm, daughter of Torbjörn Lindholm of the Ironclad Guild. What were presumably Brigitte’s heavier, booted footfalls shifted into a quickened pace as she struggled to keep up with the other set of a more constant, almost pointed speed.

“The door just… opened and closed!” Brigitte continued in an almost pleading voice. “I couldn’t find anything on the feeds, but someone _definitely_ got out of the water!”

“When was this, exactly?” The other voice asked in a harsh, matter-of-fact tone. It was a high and light voice, smoothly accented.

“Uhh…” Brigitte paused a moment. “I didn’t check the time, but it was just after sunset. Almost right as it got dark.”

“Before, or after?” the other voice questioned with seeming impatience.

Both voices were getting closer, and Sombra retreated further into the small cover afforded by the edge of the cart. If they actually walked past her, it would be difficult to stay hidden for long.

“After,” Brigitte stated firmly after another short pause. “It was already dark when the door started opening.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” replied the other voice. “The cameras went down a few minutes before that. Whoever is responsible for this was already on the ship.”

The two had thankfully stopped a few meters short of Sombra’s cover. Quietly, Sombra activated her drone’s camera, a view of the ceiling first appearing at the corner of her goggles before she manually detached the device and slowly held it out in front of her. She peered just the very front end of the highly advanced diving drone around the corner of the cart.

Brigitte and the other woman had stopped to examine another apparently destroyed security camera on the opposite wall. Brigitte showed clear interest, if slight frustration, as she observed the damage, shown in profile on Sombra’s feed.

The other woman was facing completely away from the drone’s observation angle, her arms pointedly crossed, and Sombra didn’t miss the small, triangular pulse-pistol mounted in a holster at her hip. Her Security uniform was a conforming, teched-out bodysuit that was primarily black, except for a rectangular section of light grey that ran over her shoulders and down to the belt at her waist. From what Sombra could resolve through the smaller video feed, her hair was black, cut evenly to chin-length, and almost unnaturally smooth with a metallic sheen.

“Are you sure it wasn’t someone leaving?” The security officer questioned again, her tone just slightly softened.

Brigitte shook her head. “No, it _had_ to be someone coming aboard, there…” her certainty began to falter significantly. “Unless the water was from earlier somehow… but I was down there the whole time, and I only heard the door once!”

The security officer was quiet for a longer moment. “Lots of strange things happening on this ship.”

“…Yeah, tell me about it, it’s almost like the ship has a mind of its own.” Brigitte absently scratched the back of her neck, her slightly averted eyes suddenly widening in fear as she turned immediately back toward her companion. “You… you think it’s _ghosts_?”

The other woman hummed a laugh, the humor faint but evident under a larger note of frustration. “Just let me know if anything else happens on your end.”

“Er, you can count on me!” Brigitte offered as she stiffened to attention. She nodded profusely, but lingered wide-eyed and in seeming confusion for several moments. “I’ll… get going, I guess.” She added as she turned to leave.

“And it’s not ghosts,” the security officer called absently as Brigitte’s heavy boot-steps faded off down the hallway. She waited another moment, then turned back to cast a long, searching glare at the security camera.

“Not real ones, at least,” she mused quietly to herself.

Sombra didn’t wait to find out if the woman was going to move on further down the hallway, creeping silently along the edge of the offshoot until she could duck around the corner and re-attach her drone. The lack of cameras was ultimately more of a benefit than a hindrance in her navigation back toward the public areas of the ship, as her existing maps and thermal imaging were more than sufficient to avoid being seen without the need for more tampering. Brigitte, at least, walked loudly enough that Sombra could have probably heard her approach long before there would be any real chance of being spotted.

Following the sections with destroyed cameras, Sombra eventually found herself in the darker, carpeted lobby where Satya’s theater and several similar attractions were housed, slipping out into the dimly-lit and relatively uncrowded arrangement of rounded tables and smaller cafés toward the squared-off, dead end of the especially widened hallway. She thought about just waiting there, but according to her watch, she still had a full fifty-seven minutes left even before the time she’d allotted to make the return trip.

Twenty-two minutes and another batch of terrible tourist nachos later, Sombra had returned to her former chair along the outer walkway of the main deck. As she’d already been mostly sure of, there didn’t seem to be any evidence of last night, so she settled in to relax for the remaining time.

A seagull landed on the back of the chair to Sombra’s left, then hopped again down to the nearest armrest as it curiously looked back and forth between Sombra and her food.

Sombra snickered to herself at her previous hypothesis on the matter, pausing with a single tortilla chip between her now-gloveless fingers. She spent a few moments moving the chip through the air and watching as the bird’s gaze hungrily followed it.

“You’ll probably die if you eat too many of these, you know,” Sombra chided with a smile. She pulled the chip away, to the seagull’s clear disappointment, and turned it over in her fingers to examine it again for herself. “…But I guess that’s not technically exclusive to birds.”

At an approaching noise, the seagull leapt into the air for a brief moment, fluttering its wings but ultimately landing in much the same place as a short, thin figure ran quickly around the front of the ship and into view. Sombra recognized her as one of the two women who’d been travelling with Winston, the white and red-orange of her track suit standing out brightly. Behind her, and trailing like a cape from her back, was a white cloth or towel printed with splotches of red, green, and blue.

She passed quickly by Sombra’s chair, but several moments later, backtracked with nearly equal speed to stop just in front of her.

“Hey, ain’t you the bird that was talkin’ to Winston earlier?”

Sombra smirked to herself, remaining quiet for a few long moments before turning to her left.

“Well, aren’t you going to answer her?” she snidely asked of the confused seagull that was still eyeing up its chances at her nachos.

Sombra chanced a small glance toward the sprinter, who looked back oddly for a time. Eventually, though, her face twisted into an amused, conspiratorial grin.

“Jack and Vince are havin’ a cookout on deck for lunch tomorrow,” she began excitedly, directing her words to the now-even-more-bewildered seagull. “Just a meet-n-greet, get-together sort of thing. They do it every year, it’s always _wicked cool_ , and you’ll _never_ guess where it is.”

The sprinter took several slow steps toward the seagull’s chair, cupping her hand against her mouth as she leaned in for a mock-secretive whisper. “It’s on…”

Unfortunately, the seagull chose that moment to bolt, fluttering quickly through the air and gliding away into the open sky.

The sprinter’s posture slackened, but she let out a light giggle as she turned to finally face Sombra proper. “It’s on Level Seven-and-a-Half,” she admitted tiredly with a shrug. “I’m Lena, by the way.”

“Sombra,” Sombra replied absently, raising a held tortilla chip in the air for a pseudo-toast.

Lena’s eyes narrowed in odd skepticism for a moment, but she smiled and shrugged. “Anyway, it’ll start around eleven if you wanna come.”

Sombra considered for a moment. “Can I bring a friend?” 

“The more, the merrier!” Lena recited with another smile. It was strange and oddly grating to hear such a cliché, dated phrase used with such genuine enthusiasm.

“Hmm…” Sombra absently tapped a magenta-nailed finger to her chin. As much as she was making a play at exercising her control over the conversation, there actually _were_ a lot of factors to consider. “Put me down as a ‘ _maybe_ ,’” she answered cryptically, offering an ambiguous shrug.

“Right then,” Lena stood to attention with a smile. “I’ll see ya around… _maybe _,” she echoed, a friendly challenge in her pointed smirk. She performed a small salute and took off into a run, quickly disappearing back toward the hydrofoil overhang.__

____  


* * *

  


At thirty-minutes to, Sombra started back up to the section near Satya’s theater, arriving with six minutes to spare. The area was more crowded than before, as dinner approached, but Sombra still had her choice of ten empty tables.

She took a light grey, cheap plastic seat at an equally light grey, cheap plastic table, keeping to herself and letting the room’s still-functional security cameras do the scouting work for her. Eventually, she pushed up her goggles and relayed the images to a dim display on the screen of her watch, occasionally checking the device in a way that probably looked at least slightly inconspicuous to any onlookers.

Satya arrived on-time almost exactly, quietly taking the opposite seat. She set down a tray containing a cup of hot soup, steam rising as she nodded lightly to Sombra and prepared her utensils while she allowed her meal to cool.

She was smiling just a bit, out of something that might have been relief or gratitude, and Sombra set her arms on the table and relaxed with a smirk. As much as there was any understanding between them, it was a show of protection for Sombra to radiate confidence.

Satya was without her hat – probably owing to having performed the same rabbit trick at the end of each of her shows – but still retained the white pods over her ears. Sombra was now pretty sure the diamond-shaped crystal affixed to her forehead, just below where her dark hair parted in the middle, was also a creation of hardlight, which left the origins of the similar gem on her outfit’s neckline in question. Sombra might have spent more time examining that one, but decided that was probably a spot she shouldn’t stare at for too long.

The magician had also taken off her right glove, revealing painted nails of the same deep cyan tone. Sombra was surprised she hadn’t noticed them earlier, despite Satya’s right being by far, the less mesmerizing of her two hands.

Her left glove had disappeared also, though that one had consistently seemed like less of an actual clothing item and more like a projected, framing shell around her palm that could be generated and dismissed at will. Satya’s wrist was relatively organic in texture, but it was now much clearer that her fingers were oddly segmented, more closely resembling mechanical digits in a way that was subtle from afar.

The two metal rings mounted just before and just after her elbow remained, the transparency of the limb both revealing an internal structure to each that made them truthfully more like discs, and suggesting the presence of a similar disc just at the end of her short sleeve. Sombra suspected those must have some role in further stabilizing the projected limb through its less rigid and more humanlike motions.

Satya almost didn’t seem to notice Sombra there at all, her movements gentle and elegant as she had her meal in relative peace. There still seemed to be some concern about her, but she never had the need to look up or over her shoulder like Sombra might have expected. Just letting herself focus on one thing without having to worry about a hundred others seemed at least some amount of indulgence for her, and Sombra let her have the moment.

The one time Satya did look up wasn’t out of fear, at least not the expected kind. Instead her eyes fell on Sombra, widened with some sort of troubling revelation.

“ _Oh_ … did you… want something? Is it rude of me to…”

Sombra shook her head, waving off the concern. “No, it’s fine, go ahead. I had something earlier.”

The nachos hadn’t been entirely filling, and Satya’s soup _did_ look good, but food was something Sombra could worry about later. She couldn’t even imagine the effort… no, the _trust_ it must have taken for Satya to risk trying to feel safe here again, after what had happened just the day before.

When Satya had finished, the two casually made their way out into the more brightly-lit lobby around the elevator, descending to Level 4 and taking the mostly empty outer hallway along the starboard side of the ship.

“Oh, and before I forget,” Sombra remarked casually as they walked, “we’re invited to some cookout thing for lunch tomorrow if you’re free.”

Satya kept in-step, but was noticeably quiet for a long moment. “I do not have any shows tomorrow, as the ship will be in its preparation phase for the first destination, but… if this is a social gathering of some kind, I am not certain… could you… provide more details?”

“Just a party on deck, I think,” Sombra surmised, thinking over the details she hadn’t quite paid that much attention to. “Seems pretty exclusive… in theory, at least.” She really couldn’t be sure what other random passers-by Lena might have roped in, as well.

“And who is… in charge of this gathering?”

“Uh… ‘Jack and Vince,’ I’m pretty sure it was.”

“Do you know them?”

“Nah.”

“Then… on whose authority are you permitted to attend, and how was I involved in this?”

Sombra looked across at Satya oddly, the two slowing to a stop. “Lena, one of Winston’s friends. You know…” Sombra held her arms out to mime the largest height she could. “Big touristy gorilla.”

Satya stared back, lightly nodding and remaining attentive for the relevance.

“Just asked her if I could bring a friend, that’s all,” Sombra clarified, her concern probably well beyond visible by now. “Didn’t seem like a problem or anything.”

“And what standing does this ‘Lena’ have, to make such an invitation?”

“…I don’t know, I didn’t ask.”

Satya sighed, shaking her head with something that approached a scowl. “You are hopelessly inept at obtaining the necessary data.”

“It’s a _party_ , not corporate sabotage!” Sombra deflected incredulously, trying not to be _too_ offended by the insinuation. “If they don’t want us there, we can just bail, no big deal.”

Satya seemed to object strongly to that, but stopped short of offering a rebuttal, averting her gaze instead. Her arms were already crossed close to her chest, but she only seemed to shrink further into herself, frustration apparent amid clear discomfort. The way her muscles occasionally twitched and tensed, it was almost like she was shaking.

“Hey…” Sombra began, her voice quiet and brimming with guilt. Her left hand hovered out in the air between herself and Satya’s shoulder, but kept its distance.

She’d started to put the pieces together, and could at least guess at the general cause of Satya’s hesitance. Sombra had long ago given up caring about those sorts of things, herself, but…

“You… really don’t want to intrude somewhere you might not be welcome,” she continued slowly with a wince, “even just… the _chance_ it might be something like that.”

Still looking away, Satya nodded.

“Cause… you’d feel helpless? Like you’re putting yourself there, and it’s your own fault?”

Satya nodded again, more insistently. She was holding her eyes tightly shut.

“Okay, listen…” Sombra lightly prodded, “we can just forget about it, alright? I didn’t even say we’d be there for sure, so… if you’re not feeling up to it…”

“I… would like to think it over,” Satya finally spoke. Her voice was still tense, but her arms uncrossed and she seemed like she was trying to relax again. “Perhaps I will decide otherwise, in time, but right now, it is…”

Satya tensed again just slightly at those words, and the edge of Sombra’s glove brushed near her wrist before nervously pulling away.

Sombra breathed deeply, letting the moment pass before a new idea occurred to her. “Hey, you know what?” she began anew, her voice brewing with an excitement that caught Satya’s confused attention. “There’s lots of other stuff on this ship, and the night’s still young, so… what would you want to do, if you could do anything?”

Satya was still startled and skeptical, eyeing Sombra suspiciously.

“Seriously, money’s no object. Just pick something, and that’s what we’ll do. Anything at all.”

  


* * *

  


The underwater observatory was a relatively large room – not grandiose, by any means, but much more spacious than a hallway or even one of the larger suites. A staircase almost as wide as the walking area itself led down from toward the aft of the ship, and the sloped-side construction continued with the large, slanted windows that almost completely made up the other three walls. The carpet was a dark indigo, the entire room lit so dimly it seemed as though the only light was what filtered in through the deep blue water all around.

With several blocky, finished support pillars and low, backless benches placed around the room, it looked much like an aquarium. Almost _exactly_ like an aquarium, except that actual fish sightings were few and far between. The dozen-or-so scattered guests sitting or standing about the room had a view mostly consisting of an endless expanse of open water.

And that was enough for Satya, it seemed.

The two of them had settled on a bench facing out from the starboard side of the ship, about three meters from the actual start of the windows. Occasionally, someone passing across the space in front had caused a momentary disturbance, but for the most part, the evening’s activity had been quiet observance of the color blue.

Sombra knew she wasn’t an especially rigid person when it came to being out and about, for business _or_ pleasure. Sure, she just about _hated_ anything that was needlessly formal, and she could always end up bored or, very rarely, uncomfortable, but most of the time she didn’t even really need what was happening around her to be enjoyable for her to enjoy just… _being_.

A definite part of it was that, even if she couldn’t bring herself to have fun _with_ other people, she could always find ways to have fun _at_ them. Still, trying new things just for the experience never seemed to get old. Some several times along the way, she’d learned not to take life for granted. Savoring a moment, reflecting on the fact that she was actually in a place, doing a thing, was an act of pleasure all on its own.

 _This_ , though… well, it was certainly something Sombra would have never thought to do on her own, at least not for any length of time beyond getting the general gist of it. It wasn’t exactly exciting, but it was sort of soothing in a way that was oddly familiar.

Sombra remembered the pool, the sensation of water on her skin, and if she closed her eyes, she could almost feel it all again in the cool air of the room.

But those were usually indulgences Sombra found for herself, in the moment, not something she was likely to actively seek out for its own sake. She wondered if maybe she should.

Though, a lot of her current contentment might have had less to do with the activity itself and more to do with the company. She wasn’t exactly sure how to describe the feeling of just _having_ someone there with her. It wasn’t nervousness, or infatuation, exactly. Now it was just sort of… warm. And maybe there was a bit of longing mixed in.

Satya was only a few inches to the left, seeming mostly oblivious to Sombra’s presence. It would be easy to reach out, lay a hand on her shoulder or an arm across her back. Even just to have a hand hooked around hers by a few fingers could be enough.

Sometimes, Sombra had to remind herself that touching wasn’t something people did right away, if they ever did at all. She honestly couldn’t fathom people for whom contact was something they could take or leave. Sombra _craved_ touch, knew full-well she was desperate for it. Even with the doubts that now slipped into her reminiscence, she’d taken to thinking, quite often, of the way Satya had clung to her in the water, of having her arm around Satya’s shoulders. She wanted to make the feeling last as long as she could.

What made it all worse was the way Satya sat there now, more relaxed than before but still with her arms crossed close to her chest and her head slightly sunken into her shoulders. The brief glances in her direction that always retreated. It was almost like she wanted the same thing, but didn’t know how to ask for it.

Sombra did her best to convince herself she was just reading into it, seeing what she wanted to see. It might be nothing at all, or the posture and glances could mean she was still suspicious and wary of Sombra, rather than seeking her out.

Sombra wasn’t a fool – she knew other people were never worth it in the long run – but there was still always a small part of her that wished she could melt into someone’s arms, throw caution to the wind and let herself be vulnerable just to know what that would be like. That voice had never been louder than it was now, but Sombra knew she couldn’t listen to it. She had obligations, even if all of them were of her own making, and besides… it _was_ a risk. A painful one not to take, but she knew the hurt would be worse.

On that level, she knew to give Satya her space. Satya was cautious, every risk calculated and every potential consequence weighed carefully before action could be taken. It was more than just being responsible, it was… _suffocating_ , or so it seemed to Sombra. At the very least, it was excessive, but… it was seeming more and more like that was what it took to make her feel safe.

Sombra still couldn’t decide whether someone had hurt her, or if she was just _like_ that… or maybe some combination of the two. The answer could be just one police report or medical file away, but… no. It didn’t feel right to dig this time. She wasn’t trying to get anything out of this. Satya wasn’t a means to an end, she was…

She had to admit it. She liked Satya. A lot. But not the same way she had when she’d first seen the picture on the brochure. Satya just didn’t seem like the kind of person who could even _be_ like that.

Well, okay, maybe she could _sometimes_ , Sombra decided after remembering how dramatic and commanding Symmetra had been on-stage.

But _Satya_ … Sombra was getting the distinct sense that she was someone who required a kind of care and respect that was especially genuine. Someone who needed absolute trust, unending patience, and unconditional closeness.

And even if that was exactly what Sombra longed to give her, she knew she couldn’t. She’d long ago made her peace with taking those things off the table.

Sombra could be a lot of things: a distraction, a good time, a poorly thought-out decision, a momentary, indulgent comfort… and she would have been perfectly happy to be any of those things for Satya, if that had been what she’d needed.

But _trusted_ , Sombra couldn’t be. No matter how many circles her thoughts took her in, the truth was always the same.

This couldn’t last. Sombra wasn’t what Satya needed.

She would figure out what was going on, get Satya clear of whatever she was mixed up in, and then it would be over.

  


* * *

  


The water was moving very quickly past the window.

Or, rather, the window was moving very quickly through the water.

Satya knew that to be true, despite how relatively calm everything looked from below the surface.

It was familiar, but not in a way that was as troubling as she’d feared it might be. Another thing that could go back to the way it had been before. That could remain hers, and not the domain of yet another painful, stinging memory. They corralled her like electrified fences, cutting her path short at every turn, their number always growing and never shrinking. She could not allow any more to take root, lest her world be made even smaller still.

She couldn’t deny that Sombra’s presence had helped. Sombra had been patient, and kind, and Satya couldn’t help but feel more secure in having her near. There had been difficulties, of course, but that was to be expected.

Sombra was… difficult to figure out. She seemed, as a whole, determinedly apologetic, yet so distinctly _un_ apologetic, the latter appearing to be her natural state and the former, something she insisted upon despite her clear reluctance and inexperience. Sombra was having some sort of difficulty as well, that much was evident. The present arrangement… troubled her, wracked her with something like fear or guilt in a way that was especially difficult to parse.

Perhaps, it had something to do with her… _true_ profession – something clearly dangerous and possibly of ill repute. Satya had suspicions, but knew she had formed only parts of a larger whole that had yet to make sense. Nonetheless, there were times when she was clearly retreating, and it was more than a simple observance of respect. Satya chanced another look over toward Sombra, finding the other woman still conflicted and radiating discomfort.

Satya didn’t know Sombra, but she knew herself well enough to know that neither of them were going to get anywhere if they were _both_ acting this way.

Satya had never comforted anyone. She had been inclined to, on occasion, perhaps more so out of seeing her own loneliness and desperation reflected in another. But aside from her usual aversion to touch, those people had been strangers. There was no guarantee that comfort from Satya would be welcome or wanted, let alone acceptable behavior in the circumstance.

Sombra was a stranger too, in a way. At least, she seemed determined to remain so.

But she was different, somehow. She was not observably or intuitively cleaner or more hygienic than anyone else…

…aside from perhaps, what could be gleaned from her carefully coordinated appearance, however odd the choice itself may have been. Her purple hair was dyed to the roots, her magenta lipstick perfectly applied, all signs of constant attention to detail. But surely, that was beside the point.

Perhaps it was the smooth, streamlined material of her clothing – the shining, lime green and dull purple outer shell free of wrinkles or clinging debris – that gave a sense of… artificiality. Of newness, and unmarred manufacture. But no… her skin was soft and smooth as well. The color of caramel, perhaps only several shades lighter than Satya’s own. Satya wanted to touch that too, even more than the tight fabric of her wetsuit.

No, no, not… not _want_. A lack of disinclination. Surely, that was different… was it not?

Truthfully, it was… whatever the reasons for the tension between them, Sombra had never seemed especially annoyed or displeased with Satya. It had been repeatedly reinforced, in her words and in her actions, that Satya was welcome in her life, even if she seemed to have some growing difficulty or reluctance in expressing the idea clearly. Somehow, however improbably, Satya’s presence was comforting or soothing to her.

“…Sombra?” Satya asked lightly, the word seeming to startle the other woman from her concentration. Her conflict was still apparent, and concerningly, only seemed to be worsening. “It… seems as though you… what I am saying is, I would like it if…”

Her hand was nearing Sombra’s shoulder when a sudden, shuddering reaction made her pause.

“Don’t get too close!” Sombra blurted out, with a pointedness that seemed to startle both of them out of the moment.

  


* * *

  


Sombra wasn’t sure why she’d even said it, other than the fact that wherever Satya’s words were going, they were very much threatening to undermine everything she’d just so firmly decided.

But now, she had no choice but to follow through, Satya’s bewildered confusion lingering much longer than her own.

Sombra sighed. “This can’t… I mean, it’s just that…” Her gaze darted back and forth from Satya to the window. “That you’re deep water.”

Satya stared back with even more stern confusion.

“S-sorry, probably not the best analogy,” Sombra admitted, averting her gaze at least a little bit guiltily. “What I was going to say was… I’m _shallow_. Cause I am. I don’t really… I don’t do the deep shit, okay? I’m just here to… to be on vacation. To mingle with a bunch of people I don’t know and don’t really care about, to just… _be_ , and not have to answer for any of it. A nice night or two, a couple vacation friends, someone to keep me company, that’s… that much couldn’t _hurt_ , you know? But… that’s all I’m willing to give, Satya, not…”

She sighed again, shaking her head.

“…not what you need,” she continued sullenly. “I can’t be someone you can ever really trust, to be that open, I… I _can’t_. I can’t be that for you, and you probably wouldn’t still want me if I did, so… just _don’t_ , okay?”

“ _Hmph_ , I should have guessed,” Satya finally began with a sudden scoff, a startling, pointed scowl already evident in her voice.

Sombra turned in an instant, brimming with alarm.

Through the anger and resignation she forced into play, Satya was clearly pained to a frightening degree. “I am too much for you, that is… not surprising in the least, I suppose. I thought… no, no, I shouldn’t have, I…”

“Fuck! No, that’s… that’s not what I meant!” Sombra pleaded, her arms still hanging back but poised to encircle Satya completely. “I’m not talking about _you_ , I…”

Satya paused. It was hard to tell if she believed Sombra or not, but to some degree she was noticeably trying and failing to calm herself. “Have I… I am sorry if…”

“ _Breathe_ , okay? I… I don’t hate you, I don’t think you’re needy, I just… it’s different with me.”

“…How so?” Satya asked. The questioning Scowl was back, and a pointed suspicion remained, but whatever she’d been afraid of appeared at least to now be lessened.

“With me, it’s not going to be fair,” Sombra continued after a long breath, “cause I don’t _play_ fair. I’m always going to make sure I can win, no matter what. There’s no equal playing field, so everyone who gets close to me is just… a _victim_. There’s never going to be anyone on my level, and I’m not going to stop, so…”

“So, you will always be alone,” Satya surmised, her expression not quite softened but fading to something intermediate.

“Maybe, but I can’t do that to you.”

“Why not?”

Sombra hesitated. Satya really _had_ just… become a blind spot. Out of everyone, Sombra _did_ care what Satya thought of her, _was_ afraid of Satya getting hurt, and… _would_ take it very, very badly if Satya ended up hating her.

“I was glad to have anyone,” Satya mused quietly, pausing in a bout of consideration. “I agree to your terms,” she announced more evenly.

“Wh-what?” Sombra queried with a questioning look. Satya was again frustratingly hard to read, and it was impossible to tell whether the slight edge in her voice was reluctance or ease; whether that was sadness in her eyes, or relief. It all seemed the same, somehow.

“What you said before,” Satya clarified. “All you are willing to give. There… should be no illusion that this is… _real_ , in a way it cannot be, a way that it could be for other people… I do not need all that you think I need, but I would like… _this_ , to continue, in a way you are comfortable with.”

Sombra’s widened eyes blinked twice.

It was unexpected in a way Sombra had trouble singling out, maybe naïve-seeming in a way that didn’t sit exactly right with her, but she couldn’t find it in herself to object.

All of her reasoning _was_ starting to fall apart – well, at least _some_ of her reasoning was, and maybe it wouldn’t hurt to cut a few corners and convince herself it was all of it.

“Uh, okay,” Sombra finally stuttered out. “Agreed.” She stated more firmly, offering a simple, exhausted nod. She sighed heavily with some sort of relief while Satya lightly did the same, a small, bleak smile on her lips that Sombra couldn’t help but uneasily return.

The water was still aglow with blue from the shining moonlight, but the sun had long since set, the room’s ceiling lights now making up a larger share of the ambient illumination. Satya was the first to return to observation, a subtle gesture that the moment was settled, and Sombra followed suit.

If there was anything else to clarify, it could wait for later, or tomorrow. Everything seemed just a bit better now, and that was enough.

Satya’s hand settled on Sombra’s left forearm, over and around the simple black band behind her glove assembly but before her elbow. Sombra twitched at the touch, skin touching skin on either side of the band’s interruption, but relaxed and didn’t pull away.

Sombra felt herself calm, uneasiness retreating as warmth took hold, the subtle brush of intermittently adjusting fingertips a dance of intermingling sensations across her skin. Every breath was stuttered just slightly with emotion, her eyes just short of welling with tears.

Satya seemed to derive some calm or security from the gesture as well, her breath also punctuated with a noticeable shift. She said nothing, though, her focus having returned to the water beyond without any evidence that it had ever left.

 _Yeah_ , Sombra decided with a light smirk, _it’s probably the company._


End file.
